[gentoo-user] Binary package cruncher?

[Simon <turner25@gmail.com>]

Hey there!

   I've purchased a linode some time ago because my hardware is very (*very*) 
old and it was taking very long to do updates.  Now, what I've done is I've 
setup my linode to be exactly the same as my host, portage-wise.  And on the 
linode, I have installed the sum of all packages that are installed on all my 
PCs at home...  this way, when doing a `emerge -uDN world` on the linode, all 
packages are updated for all my machines (no fancy scripts to compile each 
machine's pkg independantly, etc).

   So, this is a binary package maker (or cruncher as it does it really well!). 
  However, one detail that is interesting is that to make sure all compilations 
work fine, I decided to really install everything on the host, yes, including 
stuff that requires a X server and so on (which I never use on the host).

   This is fine with me except it's taking a lot of space to have all that 
around...  so, since my host is really fast, i thought it might not be a problem 
for me to build dependencies in a sandbox, build the program, keep only the 
binpkg and remove everything including the dependencies that "had to be 
installed" for proper compilation.

   Ideally, I would see my file /var/lib/portage/world to contain strictly the 
software used on the host (ie. apache, mysql, etc...) and another file like 
/var/lib/portage/binworld which would contain all that is in world plus all the 
other packages that are in the worlds of my other PCs.  Packages in binworld 
would be compiled, as well as their dependancies.  However, if a binpkg is 
available for a dependancy, then this one is used instead.  And this way, all 
the "ghost" dependancies and "ghost" packages will all be compiled exactly as it 
is now, with some overhead for decompressing the deps binpkg for each pkg 
compilation.

   This is not super efficient, but the way I've thought it, should be simple to 
do... a simple gentoo hack so to speak.  However, I'm wondering if anybody has 
suggestion for better ways to do this and if you could give me pointers to such 
projects.  Also keep in mind that I really really want to update ALL my PCs with 
a single `emerge -uDN world` on the host, then copy new pkgs (using rsync or 
other) to the PCs and do an `emerge -k -uDN world` on them.  Nothing more.  (So 
unless your suggestion is simpler than my current (fully installed) setup, 
please tell me!)

Thanks in advance!
   Simon